


Brain Damage

by downpours



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Brain Damage, Dehumanization, Gen, Hurt Klaus Hargreeves, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Klaus Hargreeves Whump, Klaus Hargreeves-centric, Major Character Injury, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, No Incest, Paranoia, Severe Drug Addiction, Sleep Deprivation, Suicidal Ideation, mostly just hurt, no beta we die like ben
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:47:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27636359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downpours/pseuds/downpours
Summary: Klaus is shaky, loose-lipped and incoherent. It’s been seventeen years since his siblings have seen him, and they weren’t sure what they were expecting, but...It wasn’t the man muttering to himself before them, twitching like a junkie Allison would cross streets to avoid and Diego would throw in jail with disgust.(In which the Klaus that shows up to Reginald’s funeral is a little...different.)
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves & Everyone, Number Five | The Boy & Klaus Hargreeves
Comments: 69
Kudos: 415





	1. the lunatic is in the hall

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: i have NEVER ever been on meth. klaus’ addiction in this is far more intense than mine, and i’m sorry if i wrote it innacurately. i also want to say that i don’t think mental health issues or addiction make a person any less worthy of love and support—this is just an angst fic. 
> 
> major TW for themes of dehumanization, drug addiction and brief mentions of prostitution.
> 
> the title and chapter names are from the song brain damage by pink floyd.  
> i highly recommend listening!

Klaus is shaky, loose-lipped and mostly incoherent. It’s been seventeen years since his siblings have seen him, and they weren’t sure what they were expecting, but...

It wasn’t the man muttering to himself before them, twitching like a junkie Allison would cross streets to avoid and Diego would throw in jail with disgust.

They expected an older version of the carefree child they grew up with. Number Four would sway into the room with a cheeky grin and his round-the-clock stench of herb and booze, bright-eyed and bold. He’d be a little high, a little drunk, but he’d still offer witty remarks with a speed rivaling that of Five. He’d still be smart. He’d still be present.

Unfortunately, that was not the case in this universe. In this timeline, Klaus was barely cognizant enough to stumble back to the Academy, even with unlimited energy and Ben’s patient instructions. This time, his synapses burnt up in the bowl of a crack pipe years ago. This time, his eyes were somehow both restless and vacant at the same time, the result of too many days gone without sleep.

This time, he was no longer Klaus, but the smoke-smothered shell of something that might once have been their brother.

He was fried in a way that doesn’t go away when you get sober.

Part of it was the constant drug use, part of it the psychological trauma, and part of it was from getting his head bashed in a few too many times by pissed off clients and dealers. Several years ago, he was scared of this: pushing his body to the point of irreversible damage. Back when he favored the needle over the pipe, he had nightmares about losing an arm when the injection sites would get too grossly infected. Ben used to lecture him about how his lifestyle would eventually break him in a way no human can afford to be broken. Klaus would wave him off, but part of him was terrified. 

Klaus met men on the streets who had gone down that path. People that destroyed themselves from the inside out until they couldn’t even take care of themselves anymore. They couldn’t do anything unassisted: eat, drink, bathe, or hell, even use the restroom. The homeless ones rarely made it. Klaus felt compassion for them (and a hint of pity) but he was confident that he would never be that guy. He was always larger than life. Bigger than death. Like a whack-a-mole that always popped back up cackling and unscathed.

Ben cried when it started to happen. When Klaus started losing time and repeating himself. On rare days, Klaus was a little more present, capable of conversing for a couple days in a way that made sense. Ben held onto those moments with desperation, choosing to think that maybe his brother was healing, that he’d wake up the next day offering a wry grin and a clever innuendo. He was always gone again by then.

So yes, Klaus was different when he stumbled into the Academy. (At least he was wearing black.)

“Are you high?” Allison scoffed.

“Jesus man, you  reek,” Diego stated.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Luther spat. 

In Klaus’ drugged-up brain:  _ I’m talking, you assholes, why can’t you hear me? See, ha! I’m talking, I’m talking, stop ignoring me...wow, that blonde guy is big. He might hurt me. He’s going to hurt me. Why are these guys pretending not to hear me? Am I being annoying? Why are these strangers talking to me at all? Stranger danger, stranger danger...Am I being annoying? Am I? Am I? _

_ There’s someone in my head, but it’s not me. _

The medium doesn’t realize that his lips are moving in lazy half-words, but he’s not making sense, and nobody can understand him. Klaus stands in the middle of the room, doing nothing but jittering and idly scratching at the bugs that made a home under his skin. He doesn’t remember why or how he got here. This building is too fancy for his people like him. He hasn’t picked up on the social cue to join them on the living room couch. He looks bizarre, like he has a battery missing, like how Grace gets when she needs to charge (if his mother was a meth addict). 

Ben looks at him with pity. The other siblings just exchange confused stares. 

“What’s he doing?” Diego asks with a frown. “Why isn’t he making sense?”

“He’s not usually this gone even when he’s high,” Allison examines.

“Well, how would we know? It’s been over a decade. Maybe the stupid junkie finally lost it,”  Luther snarks.

Diego shoots up off the couch. “He’s still our brother, don’t you dare talk like—“

“Oh really, Number Two?  _ That _ guy is our brother?” Luther gestures fiercely at the man spun out in their living room. 

Diego pauses for a moment, because Klaus looks...bad.  _ Really _ bad. The look in his green eyes is all wrong: his irises dart around the room like he can’t focus on a single thing, desperate and insane. His thin frame is covered in bruises and scratches, some fresh and some scarred over. His cheeks are sunken in and corpselike. He’s past skinny and well into emaciated. Klaus looks exactly like every mugshot he’s seen of men arrested for possession of hard drugs.

His brother looks like a living, breathing, warning sign for addiction. A human cautionary tale. He looks absolutely nothing like the boy that he used to sneak out to Griddy’s with.

Diego wonders when that boy died. He considers if anything would be different if he didn’t block Klaus out of his life after the fourth time his wallet got stolen. Was it his fault that his brother is like...that?

Diego is pulled out of his thoughts when Vanya enters the room. Part of him wants to spit some scathing remark about how she betrayed the family by writing that damn book, but he can’t stop staring at his spun out brother long enough to come up with one.

“Hi,” Vanya says softly. 

“Hey, sis,” Allison smiles in response. It doesn’t reach her eyes.

“What’s...” Vanya hesitates before gaining the confidence, “what’s wrong with Klaus?”

Two voices answer simultaneously.

“Nothing,” Diego defends.

“Drugs,” Luther scorns.

“Right,” Vanya says uncertainly.

Allison sighs and rubs her temple. “We don’t exactly know.”

Luther rolls his eyes and stands up, effectively dropping the topic of the 6 foot drug-addicted elephant in the room. He goes on a tirade about Reginald’s death, and sooner or later, Diego and Luther are in a verbal sparring match that is about to become a very literal sparring match.

Until—

There’s a flash of distinct blue in the courtyard and all of Reginald’s gold trinkets fly across the room.

At the noise, Klaus looks up for the first time with a coherency they haven’t yet seen. 


	2. rearrange me ‘till i’m sane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five returns to a family that is somehow even more dysfunctional than he left it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for drug-induced self harm, mild gore, and suicidal ideation. it’s not a fun one pals, be safe.
> 
> i wasn’t expecting such a generous response to this fic, so enjoy this chapter that’s twice the length of the first one!

There’s a flash of distinct blue in the courtyard and all of Reginald’s gold trinkets fly across the room.

At the noise, Klaus looks up for the first time with a coherency they haven’t yet seen.

The blue looks familiar. He feels the need to chase the light outside—partly because it reminds him of someone he might have once known, but mostly because of how orgasmic it would feel to stretch his restless legs on the way there. The strangers behind him are shouting to “stay back”, but that’s stupid. Klaus can make his own decisions! He’s taken care of himself on the streets for seventeen years, after all.

So why are the people yelling after him so panicked? Don’t they feel the same compelling urge? Don’t they want to feel the blue glow on their skin?

(If Ben could read his thoughts, he’d remind Klaus: “No. Sober people don’t act like that. You’re just high.)

When Klaus steps barefoot into the courtyard, the chaotic vortex is a lot less inviting and a lot more terrifying. His eyes tear up from the intensity of light and he feels his heart quicken dangerously. _Oh, no,_ he thinks. _This is all wrong._ All he wanted was to feel good. To scratch an impulsive itch. But that itch feels less like it was scratched and more like it was impaled.

Now he’s going to die like Ben: torn apart from the same preternatural bullshit that brought them into this world.

Ben is telling him to breathe, but he doesn’t listen, because the pulsing light is going to swallow him whole, he’s going to be torn apart limb by limb, ashes to ashes and dust to dust—

Until—

A figure tumbles out and the blue light shuts off.

Klaus doesn’t stop trembling.

He self-soothes his shaky hands by rubbing them against the hot flesh of his cheek, unaware that he’s scrubbing it red and raw. The touch makes him feel better. Somebody’s pleading with him to “calm down, man” but can’t they see that he’s trying to do that? He’s touching his face because it feels warm, comforting, and he wants to keep doing it.

He only stops violently scrubbing when a small hand grasps his arm with a strength disproportionate to the adolescent body it’s attached to.

He looks down

and goes deathly still.

 _Oh,_ Klaus thinks, _I must be spun as shit if I’m hallucinating this._

“Fivey,” Klaus says suddenly, not caring if he isn’t real. “I can see you.”

* * *

The blue glow reminds Ben of something from his childhood. It’s nostalgic. Not many things in the past year have made him feel that, what with watching his only tether to the living world slowly estrange into a person Ben no longer found familiar.

Ben can only hope that Klaus recognized the distinct shade of blue as well, because he’s ignoring the pleas of his siblings to “stay back” and barreling outside with an manic grin. When Klaus is high, he’s like a moth; he travels to the most high-energy person/place/thing he sees just to satisfy his thirst for stimulation. Ben can’t tell whether Klaus follows the blue light because it looks like the signature power of his missing brother, or because he’s brain dead enough to walk into a whirlwind just to intensify his rush. His brother has had worse ideas, after all.

He’s still contemplating this when his missing thirteen-year-old brother falls out of an interdimensional portal.

The ghost has seen a lot of crazy shit in the past decade (thanks, Klaus). But this? This takes the cake.

When Klaus recognizes Five, Ben nearly sobs.

Earlier, Ben was reunited with his siblings for the first time in over a decade. He had to watch as Klaus—his only tie to his family—responded to their greetings with clueless eyes, dumb and unresponsive. Ben would’ve killed to hug any one of them; Klaus has fucked himself up so badly he can’t even remember their names. He bites down the thought that  _it shouldn’t have been him, but Klaus,_ who decided that smoking his brain into shards of glass was worth forgetting his family.

“Fivey,” Klaus marvels. “I can see you.”

It’s the first full sentence that he’s said in days, and Ben feels like he can finally breathe again.

Everyone turns to stare at Klaus. Except Five, who’s eyeing the surprised looks on their faces, searching for an explanation they don’t give him. 

(The explanation gone unsaid is that they feared their brother was so fried that he could no longer communicate. They felt more joy at hearing their thirty-year-old brother make sense than a new parent does hearing their toddler’s first words. And isn’t that a depressing comparison to make about your adult brother?)

“Of course you can see me, dipshit,” Five finally says, returning his focus to Klaus, and the insult is so familiar that suddenly Ben feels thirteen again. “You’re bleeding. You have to stop hurting yourself.”

“I’m not bleeding.” (He is.) “You’re just seeing things. It’s okay. Sometimes I see blood and bugs that aren’t actually there, and I just need to be told that they aren’t real.” (Ben’s the one that has to talk him down.) “It’s just the paranoia. I’m fine. It’s not real, Fivey.” 

Klaus smiles in what Ben can only guess is an attempt at consolation. But the bloody grin is filthy and unhinged, much less comforting than it is downright unsettling.

Five takes in his brother’s sunken cheeks, yellow smile, and sweaty skin disfigured by scratches and sores. He frowns and gently directs Klaus out of the rain and inside the building. Ben knows that Klaus can’t afford to get another cold, and he’s grateful that Five must have had the same thought. Over his shoulder, the boy shoots his siblings a look that screams:  _ What the fuck happened to  him while I was gone? _

* * *

Number Four notices that he’s in the kitchen of the Academy. He doesn’t remember walking here. He didn’t hear Grace call him for dinner, but maybe it’s dinnertime. He tenses when he realizes neither he nor Five are wearing their uniforms—Reginald would be down any minute to scold them over the sound of Herr Carlson.

But, most importantly, why are those grown-ups stalking him and Five?

”Five, man, you gotta listen to me,” Klaus says manically, his huge eyes darting to the unfamiliar adults, “I don’t know these people. They’ve been following me, and I don’t know them. You can see them too, right? Are they dead? Shit. I hate ghosts. Go away, ghosts, go away, I don’t want you here—“

”Klaus,” Five begins with uncharacteristic kindness, “They’re not ghosts. That’s Luther, that’s Diego, that’s Allison, and that’s Vanya.”

The siblings in question watch the scene in shell-shocked confusion, unsure how to help without making it worse.

”Klaus, please listen to Five,” Ben tries.

”No, no, no. You’re out of your damn mind,” Number Four mutters, shaking his head like a wet dog, the irony of his words lost on him. “They’re way too old. That doesn’t make any sense. Five, we’re all the same age, and you’re thirteen, and those imposters are _clearly_ not thirteen! They lied to you. Somebody sent them. You can’t trust them.”

Five sighs. He’s not getting anywhere with this. “What’s the date? The exact date.”

Klaus furrows his eyebrows in thought. He fidgets with frustration when he can’t remember.

“March 24th, 2019.” Vanya supplies.

Five considers this. “Good.”

The date sounds wrong to mentally-thirteen Klaus, but he’s having trouble doing the math to figure out why. He’s too confused to speak, so he busies himself by biting his welted lip instead.

“So, are we going to talk about what just happened? I think that’s more important than our stupid brother’s bad trip,” Luther finally speaks. “It’s been _seventeen years.”_

“It’s been a lot longer than that,” Five scoffs. Now that Klaus has calmed down, Five blinks to grab the materials to make a fluffernutter sandwich, ignoring the way Luther groans at the sound.

“Where’d you go?”

“The future. It’s shit, by the way.”

Nobody responds for a moment.

“Alright, I’ll bite. What happened in the future?” Diego asks.

Five says nothing, spreading marshmallow fluff on a slice of bread with the intensity of an operating surgeon. He didn’t want to tell the whole peanut gallery. Not yet. Not until he had a plan.

 _They need to know_ , echoes a voice that sounds suspiciously like Delores. He tried to ignore her, but she’s right.

* * *

Back when Five was working as a temporal assassin at the Commission, he spent every free moment digging up information on the apocalypse. Throughout his entire career, this only amounted to about ten total minutes. (The Handler kept an eye on him like a hawk in stilettos.)

Once, in a stroke of rare luck, Five was able to blink into the Infinite Switchboard room—just long enough to use the machine. Another miracle: inside, he found a hint to help him avert the apocalypse.

Five only had time to view a single scene. The Handler would return any moment. He turned the knobs to April 1st, 2019, praying that the screen showed him something from that day that he could use.

The scene that played was timestamped fifteen minutes before the scheduled apocalypse. It was a recording of all his siblings (minus an injured Allison and a powerless Vanya), fighting in a theater for their lives against gunmen in gas masks. Five recognized their outfits from the Commission.

The Hargreeves put up a good fight; Diego was throwing knives like there was no tomorrow (ha), and Luther was taking men down in threes. But the Commission agents kept coming. There were just so _many_. For a horrific moment, Five thought he was about to watch his siblings die on camera.

Until the theater lit up in an haze of blue.

And—was that Klaus channeling _Ben?_

Five watched with amazement as his most powerless brother summoned The Horror, sweeping dozens of agents off their feet and sending them into the afterlife in gory chunks. Well, that was unexpected.

The fifty-eight-year-old didn’t understand exactly what he was seeing, but he knew one thing:

He needed the force of the entire Academy to even stand a chance at saving the world.

* * *

Five finishes his sandwich, focusing on the taste of peanut butter instead of the bile stirred by thoughts of the apocalypse.

”When I jumped forward in time, you know what I found?” Five pauses, continuing when none of his siblings answer. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

Before he can back out, Five keeps talking. He leaves no gory detail out. His siblings need to understand how much was at stake. They needed to know that if they refused to cooperate, they would be dooming the world to the same hellish fate he spent forty-five years trying to save it from.

So, he tells them about the starvation. The roaches. The crippling isolation. The way he masked his face to cover the stench of corpses slow-cooked in the desolate heat.

He tells them about how they looked in death, and how difficult it is to dig an adult grave with the hands of a child.

And when he says that his consciousness is fifty-eight, the look in his eyes is so tired that they believe him.

”The world ends in eight days. There’s only one way I know to stop it.” Five takes a deep breath, recounting his story about the tape he watched. He omits the detail about his career as a time-traveling assassin, but otherwise tells them everything he saw.

When he mentions how Klaus summoned Ben, the siblings gape in shock.

All except for Klaus, whose eyes are stuck facing the empty corner of the room.

Five frowns at him. He wonders aloud whether Klaus’ powers are tied to his sobriety.

And suddenly, the medium is in a heated argument with the wall.

”No, no, no. You’re just like the other ghosts. You can’t tell me what to do. You’re dead, and _I’m sorry_ , but you’re staying dead— _I’m not getting fucking sober for you!_ ” Klaus laughs darkly. He rips open a scab on his jaw in the process. “I know I’m killing myself, get new material, I wanna be dead anyway. So haunt someone else! Because I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care—“

Allison tries, “Klaus, please, we didn’t say anything—“

But he won’t stop talking. His words grow more nonsensical, jumbled together in tearful sputters. He’s started clawing his nails into his face again.

_I wanna be dead anyway._

Horrified, Five blinks over and grips his brother’s hands away from his damaged face.

At the human contact, Klaus begins to calm down, slowly retreating to the dissociative state from earlier in the evening. His curses turn to incoherent mumbles.

It doesn’t feel like much of an improvement.

“Time really did a number on you, huh, Klaus,” Five says, his expression softening with pity. He analyzes his spacey brother’s face like a particularly puzzling mathematical proof, not quite able to piece the components together to reach a theorem. Klaus’s green eyes roam with animalistic blankness in a way that looks wrong. The man in front of Five is a far cry from the bright child that used to challenge his answers in geometry.

In all honesty, he looks less like the brother Five knew in life and more like the corpse he knew in the apocalypse.

The assassin’s frown quickly hardens again.

“So what kind of help has Klaus gotten yet? Have you found anything that grounds him from his psychosis? Because we need all of the Academy to even stand a chance at stopping the apocalypse.”

“Uh.” Luther supplies unhelpfully.

” _Psychosis?_ ” Vanya repeats.

“We just saw Klaus again today for the first time since we were teenagers,” Allison admits. “We had no idea he would be...like this.”

 _“What,”_ Five snarls. “You left him by himself the entire time in _this state?_ ” The old man went through hell and back, forty-five years of scorching sun and starvation and solitude to find his family, and they haven’t even spoken to one another in over a decade? Do they realize how ungrateful they are? He’s killed and killed and killed for just a single week with his siblings, and they haven’t even—

 _Nope,_ Five thinks. _Don’t let childish emotions get in the way. Just fix Klaus and save the world._

“Hey!” Diego barks, “Unlike _you assholes, I_ actually tried to help him while Allison left for LA to get her bloated ego massaged, Luther left for the goddamn moon, and Vanya left to jerk off to her little fan-fiction about joining the child-soldier infantry. You know how many times he showed up at my doorstep because—“

“You knew he turned into a nutcase and you said nothing?” Allison interrupts, arms crossed threateningly.

“No! N-No. He was never this bad. I...haven’t seen him in a few years. He used to show up, high but coherent, and I’d buy the idiot some food. We’d catch up, he’d tell me grossly detailed stories about what he’d done since I last saw him, he’d call me a prude and he’d leave with my wallet. He was never, he w-was never...” Diego just gestures to Klaus, who has since taken a fascination to rocking on his heels and absently grinding his jaw back and forth.

If Klaus were more cognizant, he would make a colorful comment about how it’s rude to speak about him like he isn’t there. But it isn’t rude, because, in his state, he honestly isn’t there at all.

“We don’t have time for this. We need to figure out what he’s on and sober him up. The fate of the world depends on it.”

Five approaches Klaus slowly, like the intoxicated man is a wounded bunny instead of a thirty-year-old twice his size. The assassin swallows the hurt he feels from seeing his brother this way. He charts the symptoms clinically. Efficiently. Just like the Commission taught him.

Klaus’ pupils are dilated so intensely that his eyes look more black than green. No constricted pupils—that rules out most painkillers, heroin, and benzodiazepines. Alcohol and benzos are the only drugs you can die going cold turkey off of, and Klaus doesn’t reek of booze. Five has a brief moment of relief knowing that whatever he’s on, the withdrawal symptoms won’t _physically_ kill him (they’ll just make him wish he was dead). At this, it’s down to hallucinogens, ketamine, stimulants, or marijuana.

Yeah, weed doesn’t fry a person like this.

The way Klaus is clearly still high and yet restless with jerky tremors, Five has his bets on stimulants. Especially when recalling the manic chatter from earlier.

And the red spots on his popping veins—

And his bloodthirsty fingernails—

And his rotting smile—

Five doesn’t like where this is going.

The high has lasted too long to be crack cocaine, so Five has his answer.

“He’s been smoking methamphetamine.”

” _Meth?”_

“Oh, God.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“And the Holy Ghost,” Ben jokes to himself with signature bad timing.

A beat goes by, the room stunned into silence. Luther looks completely out of his element as the so-called leader of the family. Allison looks disgusted, but it’s anyone’s guess whether it’s directed at Klaus, herself, or both. Vanya looks panicked, silently practicing breathing exercises with little success.

Diego shouldn’t be surprised, but he is. The vigilante knew that his brother chased drugs with the desperation of a rabid raccoon clawing for leftovers in a trashcan. He wasn’t stupid—though his siblings would disagree—he knew that Number Four had long since graduated from joints and earned his master’s degree in Xanax with a minor in cocaine. But the Klaus he knew took the type of poison people use in upscale nightclubs to _loosen up_. Not the type of poison that makes sane men savage sores into their flesh and brains.

Diego refuses. “You can’t tell that just by looking at him.”

“Well, you could if you were smarter,” Five quips back.

Diego charges towards the boy, struggling against Luther’s iron grip. In the commotion, Five glances at the scarred crooks of Klaus’s inner elbows.

“Hey, look on the bright side!” Five says, extending his palms out in a false apology. “At least he stopped shooting up. Any of you help him with that?” Five relishes in the way his dry words silence the room. He clicks his tongue. “Didn’t think so.”

(Ben gives a petty look at the lack of credit he gets.)

Vanya fumbles through her pockets and dry-swallows two pills.

Sighing, Five disappears in a flash of blue light before reappearing with four books:

1 _. Psychological Trauma For Dummies._

2\. _Recovery From Stimulant Abuse: The Highs and Lows._

3\. _The Pharmacology Student’s Guide to Amphetamines and Methamphetamines._

And, the most alarming title:

4\. _Brain Damage And Your Loved One._

”He’s going to enter withdrawal soon. Get cracking or say goodbye to the world as you know it.”

Standing invisible in the corner, Ben can’t help but feel that the mission to help Klaus may be too little and far too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: invents an apocalypse-related incentive to help klaus because the hargreeves siblings tend to only show affection for one another when the fate of the world is at stake
> 
> rewrote this a million times and I'm still not happy with it. please take it from me before i lose my mind 
> 
> psa: i love all the hargreeves siblings. luther and allison are kinda dicks in this because they’re in uncharted territory and don’t understand what’s happening to klaus, but no character bashing here! i’m also working on a luther-centric whump series so keep an eye out for that if it interests you!
> 
> thanks for reading! you enjoyed it, kudos and comments are my love language!! <3


	3. interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Interlude on the events leading up to the first time Klaus tries meth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, short update, but i decided to make this story longer! i’m thinking around 10 chapters to get to the end of the s1 arc.
> 
> sorry for the brief pause in plot, i had a lot of Feelings and wanted to vent
> 
> TW for child abuse, suicidal thoughts, explicit drug use, hinted noncon and mentions of prostitution

As a teenager, Klaus fell hard for downers. They were the easiest drugs to obtain, after all. He could fake an injury after training to get a couple tabs of Vicodin from his concerned mother. If he was really lucky, he managed to get roughed up enough to warrant a few Perc 30s. And when Reginald reprogrammed Grace to only administer over-the-counter medication to Klaus, he could still break into the liquor cabinet with ease.

Klaus loved how the downers made him feel: like his brain was tucked under a warm, plush blanket of protective insobriety. The drugs exorcised what haunted him in more ways than just the ghosts. Nothing felt serious when he was drunk or high. He could make light of the fact that his very existence was cursed. He could grin at the thought of his silly ghosts. He could giggle at the thought of eyes falling out of sockets like Yo-Yos, eviscerated organs spilling out like pasta carbonara. He could crack jokes between the thwacks of Reginald’s cane. 

Grace liked to call their brutal training “playing”, and when he was high, he could make-believe that his broken bones were just scraped knees.

It was no wonder he spent his twelfth birthday shaking off withdrawals. His siblings were concerned about why he was always sick. Their mother would tell them, “Klaus can’t play right now, poor thing has another fever,” but something like hurt twitched in her robot eyes when she said it. She told Reginald to put in an order for Narcan. Something in her programming made her suspect she’d be using it within the next year.

At thirteen, Five disappeared. 

Grace used the Narcan. 

Klaus told his siblings he just passed out from low blood sugar, trying to save them from the pain of knowing they almost lost another brother.

As he kept using, the level of intoxication that kept him sane got higher. Soon, he had to be blacked out to feel normal. Klaus was a kid with the liver of a pot-bellied veteran, and he would do anything to avoid the hell of withdrawal. It was almost impressive, the way he avoided sobriety with such stubbornness.

His siblings started to catch on a few months before they turned fourteen. It was hard not to; Klaus was always nodding off before noon. “Someone wake up Four,” became as commonplace a phrase as “what’s for dinner?” Klaus hated how tired the downers made him. He’d end up prematurely passing out before he could even enjoy his morning. It was like reliving the same movie that always turned off right before the climax. It was an exhausting way to live, always getting chemically blue-balled right at his sweet spot of insobriety.

So, enter stage left: uppers!

They were the perfect solution. Not only would he stop passing out when he finally  _ wanted _ to be awake, but he could get another buzz cooking at the same time. Caffeine was too weak; he could sleep through espresso shots even when sober. But he had been sneaking out of the Academy more often, and he’d caught rumors of powders that could make you stay awake for days.

Klaus tried cocaine for the first time a month after Reginald locked him in the mausoleum for passing out during training. 

And— _wow_. If life before uppers was like a movie without a climax, with them it was like every scene  _was_ the climax. Nothing was boring. Not Pogo’s drawling lectures, not Luther’s blueprints before missions, not even the fucking fly on the wall. 

At fourteen, Klaus had a routine. Every day, he would wake up hungover, so he’d mix three shots in his orange juice for the pain. He’d cut a couple lines to wake up. The coke would give him heart palpitations and mania, so he’d have another drink. And then he’d get too drowsy, so he’d rail another line. Shot. Bump. Rinse ~~the blood from his nose~~ and repeat. 

At fifteen, his life was a balance beam between withdrawals and overdoses. He got used to coming down when the birds started chirping. By this point, he was more acquainted with the sounds of the morning robins than the sounds of his siblings’ voices. He wished he could sleep again; not enough to get sober.

At sixteen, Ben died, and Klaus’ life was nothing more than a joyless bender. Sometimes he felt as dead as his brother. Sometimes he wished it was him, instead, but he’d never do that to his siblings intentionally. Klaus settled for killing himself slowly.

Shortly after the funeral, Reginald kicked him out. For the first time in his life, Klaus honestly didn’t blame his father. Coke was fucking _expensive_ , and if Klaus stayed another year, the Academy would be stripped to its bare walls.

Klaus’ memories of the years after grew even more scattered. Glimpses of Allison’s movies. Bruises from sex he didn’t remember. Nose bleeds. Waffles. Nausea. Neon lights. Piss-soaked alleyways. Ecstasy. Silver spoons. Boyfriends. Broken bones. Kisses. Ambulances.

It sounded more romantic when he  didn’t remember most of it.

Often, Ben wished for the same memory loss. If ghosts needed sleep, the trauma of watching his brother’s life would keep him up at night.

Sometimes Ben would lead him to Diego’s doorstep when Klaus was too high to realize where he was going. Sometimes he’d leave with his wallet. Sometimes he wouldn’t. Klaus looked worse every time. Eventually, Diego told him to stop coming. (He almost said it without tearing up.) 

Klaus tried meth soon after. 

In all honesty, it was out of convenience more than anything. He drained his last baggie of coke and his one-night-stand said he had something to keep him up, producing a rig from his nightstand. Ben shouted at him. Klaus hesitated. He didn’t care so much about how lethal it was; he was honestly more concerned about ruining his perfect teeth. (He soon would.) He always wanted to leave a pretty corpse.

“It’s on me, doll,” the guy promised with a wolfish grin.

Klaus nodded, swallowing the lump in his throat. Ben closed his eyes. He heard the hum of a torch, the sound of bubbles, and then, Klaus’ breathless: “fuck, that’s  _ good.”_

Ben said that his lifestyle would kill him.

Klaus thought,  _ that wouldn’t be so bad. _

Meth wasn’t what ruined his life. Klaus had been running from sobriety since he was prepubescent. But something changed after Klaus found his drug of choice: the desperation grew, the clients got rougher, the dealers got crueler, Klaus got emptier, and...

Ben never forgave him for making him watch his brother unravel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the life of an polyaddict is feeling like shit about half the time you spend awake, and then taking more drugs to stop feeling like shit, and then feeling like shit because you took more drugs. i really do not want to romanticize drug use in this, and i hope i’m able to portray that realistically. 
> 
> i thought i’d do a little interlude to explain how klaus got to this point, because, well, meth is a big jump from canon.


	4. lock the door, throw away the key

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Klaus starts to come down. Diego reaches a conclusion. Five just needs some coffee. None of them have a good time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy new years! sorry for the late update, my immunocompromised ass is 6 days into a fever (not covid) and i have only gotten low enough to edit this today. 
> 
> trigger warnings for explicit drug use, canon typical violence, so much language and just general self-destructive tendencies.

_Four hours before the funeral._

There’s no feeling like crystal. When it boils down to it, that’s the only reason that Klaus is willing to torture himself with the vicious cycle of withdrawal time after time. 

Before the funeral, earlier that evening, Klaus (per usual) set out to score. One benefit of having a consistent dealer meant that they didn’t have to talk much. As he grew less coherent, that was getting more and more helpful. 

“Just a g today?”

Klaud nodded shakily, fumbling with the crumpled cash in his pocket, trying to count but losing his place every few bills. Ben begrudgingly helped him count when the dealer grew impatient. The dealer—Rob? Bob?—nodded and clapped a bag into his hand.

“See ya soon, man.”

Shortly later, Klaus stumbled into a public bathroom stall cradling a lighter and a pipe.

“Really, Klaus? You have to see the family in an hour,” Ben exasperated, leaning on the changing table, “at least wait until after.”

The thin man shook his head furiously. “Go play with the shadow people and leave me alone.”

It had been three days since Klaus had slept—that’s always when the dark forms crept into his periphery, menacing and hungry and watching his every move. Not ghosts, but just as haunting. Shadow people were terrifying. But making them leave meant getting sleep, which required coming down. Klaus shuddered; he’d take the spying shadows over the screaming ghosts any day.

“I’ve told you before that those are just hallucinations.”

His trembling fingers missed the spark-wheel of the lighter a dozen times before achieving any success. Heat licked his fingers as he warmed the bowl, evenly melting the crystals into a sludge. The precision at which he prepared his drugs was always a bit ironic, considering he was so careless in every other aspect of his life. But no matter how badly he was craving, time slowed when he finally had his fix in his hands. He watched with avid anticipation as sludge gave way to a glassy puddle. Perfect. Finally, he sucked in the gas, choked on a cough and blinked away tears.

He exhaled. “Christ.”

“At least you don’t use needles anymore,” Ben muttered, half-heartedly batting away the smoke. After one too many harrowing IV experiences, that was one of the only promises Klaus ever kept.

It didn’t feel like much of a victory.

Finally feeling well enough to walk, Klaus stood up with newfound vigor. He paced out of the bathroom and into the trash-littered streets, occasionally doubling back when the ghost told him he was going in the wrong direction. Klaus was always...pent up when he was on stims. Ben had to keep him from stopping by “a friend’s” at least three times. 

Despite it all, the ghost managed to guide his hopped-up brother to the gates of the Academy.

Klaus couldn’t remember why he was here.

Whatever. That was fine. He had to keep moving to outrun the shadow people, he _couldn’t_ stop moving, so he barged into the foreign building. Waves of pure pleasure pumped through his veins, so everything was going to be okay. There was nothing inside that could hurt him, not when he felt so good.

And then—some weird shit happened. Maybe there was a funeral? The imposters that claimed to be his siblings kept talking about a murder. 

Five was the only one that looked familiar. But his brother wasn’t making any sense; rambling on and on about some nuclear apocalypse. Klaus felt bad for him—the talk was manic and senseless. Maybe Five was tweaking. _Poor guy_ , Klaus thought. Couldn’t handle his high, not like Klaus, who was too much of a metheran to ever be one of those guys.

And then Five said something trippy about getting sober and summoning Ben, Ben got ideas, and Klaus shut him down. 

“ _I’m not getting fucking sober for you!”_

The ghost finally retreated. Suffocating leech always preached about sobriety. As if Ben wouldn’t want to get high if ghosts could.

That was...some time ago.

It has been a little over five hours since his last fix. He knows this because Ben told him, telling him that he didn’t need another one. _Asshole_.

Sounds of turning pages and murmurs of hushed conversation surround him. Five and the adults are all reading in a circle around the table. That’s...weird. It feels eerily similar to the time he spent in rehab. Except he’s spun. Well. Who’s he kidding? Klaus was spun in rehab, too.

The high was duller, now. Klaus no longer wants to be here, stuck in place. Not when he itches to rekindle that initial rush. Who wouldn’t want that?

His dirty fingers toy with the pen and notebook on his lap. Illustrations of leering shadows and eyes with blown-out pupils cover the page. He can’t remember where he got the notebook, but he’s bored of playing with it.

Once Five and the strangers let their guard down, he resolves to make a run for it.

_Just like rehab._

* * *

“I’m taking the car to find a decent cup of coffee,” Five announces, blinking away before the others can ask questions.

“That was rude,” mutters Luther.

Allison hums and goes back to reading.

It takes all of three minutes without Five for things to go sideways.

“We need to talk about Dad,” Luther insists, slamming shut _Psychological Trauma For Dummies_. “He died a week before the apocalypse, and that’s not even a little bit suspicious to any of you?”

Diego groans. “Drop it. The old man got what he deserved, and that’s that.”

“Diego,” scorns Allison.

“No, Allison, tell me why you’re still defending Dad after what he did to us. After what he did to _Luther!_ ”

“Guys, stop,” tries Vanya.

Now _that_ gets a rise out of Luther. “You just can’t handle that _I_ am Number One—“

Klaus takes his chance.

It happens suddenly: Klaus shoots one last glance at the argument, he stands up, and he’s out the door within seconds.

But for all his unyielding confidence, he really should’ve had a better plan. Klaus was always a quick runner, but after years of neglecting his body, he is no match for his more athletic siblings.

Diego catches him first, pinning his tattered coat to the wall with two knives. The movement rustles the contents of his pockets, and with a _crash!_ his Pyrex pipe falls out and the stem shatters on the floor.

With a lifetime spent between the Academy and the moon, Luther probably can’t tell the difference between a pipe for smoking weed and one for smoking crack or meth. But Allison can. Diego can. 

He knew Klaus struggled, but…

“Damn,” he sighs. 

It was unmistakable now.

Five was right. He discarded his favorite brother like trash; in turn, Klaus spiraled even farther down into the drain of addiction. And what was the last thing Diego remembered saying to Klaus when he kicked him out years ago? It was something along the lines of “I don’t ever want to even _look_ at you.” 

Guilt settles in Diego’s stomach like a stone. He had no idea how much he’d end up regretting that. How much he’d end up missing the sight of a brother that looked at him with any sort of recognition.

Earlier, Diego had desperately hoped Five was wrong. But Klaus never could do things halfway—Number Four loved hard, but he suffered harder.

Little Number Four: who cried at ghosts and snuck into his bedroom for cuddles after nightmares. Who asked mom to cut the crusts off his sandwiches. Who hand-drew birthday cards for six siblings.

Little Number Four: who grew up to be a meth addict.

The man in question wriggles against the wall, failing to escape his pinned coat. 

Diego looks him in the eye. “You can’t outrun us. Just _look_ at yourself, man...give it up.”

Klaus whimpers helplessly, arms stuck inside the jacket. Diego inches forward, reaching inside the coat pockets and ignoring the way his brother spits on him with foul breath (“fuck you, you fucking fed—“) as his fingers find a baggie. It’s half full with shards that look sharp to the touch and Diego can’t believe anyone, let alone his brother, would willingly put that shit inside of them. He doesn’t like to entertain the implications of the sheer _need_ to feel something that would make someone do that.

Allison reaches out behind him, her tone much gentler than earlier. “I’ll go flush it.”

Klaus finally manages to wriggle out of the coat, but he only makes it one step before Luther restrains him once more.

“Drop the rest,” the taller man orders in his Number One voice.

“Don’t have anything else, let me go, you sicko—“

“Yeah, right,” Diego responds, patting down the rest of his pockets like he’d learned to in the police academy. Sure enough, the addict lied. He finds a couple of loose pills, a mystery powder, a banged-up torch, and a lighter. And some condoms, but he leaves those. He pockets the rest to trash.

Klaus looks feral: too-wide eyes red-tinged and livid, his lip quivering.

“Jesus Christ, man,” Diego says. It’s all he _can_ say, really. 

“I got him. Go get rid of that,” Luther assures.

He nods, absently flipping the lighter on the way out. Vanya watches from the corner with Bambi eyes, looking so much smaller than earlier. Diego is too exhausted to be mad about the book anymore. 

When he returns from disposal duty, none of his siblings are in the hallway.

Odd.

They’re not in the dining room, either.

Even odder.

Diego unsheathes a knife, inching around the corner, ready to pounce. His grip on the knife tightens when he hears the metallic creak of a door from downstairs. He darts down the stairs, scared of what he’ll find when—

“W-what are you doing with him?” Diego stutters.

Because waiting in the basement is Luther, manhandling Klaus into a windowless room. Or, he realizes, less of a room and more of a cellar. Allison watches with regret pinching her face.

She sighs, turning to Luther. “I’ll go get him some water and dinner, he can’t afford to lose any more weight. He looks starved already.” Allison heads for the stairs, shaking her head at her own thoughts.

“This is inhumane,” insists Vanya, “we can’t just lock him up.”

Luther snorts. “Alright, Vanya, then do _you_ want to be in charge of keeping him from running off? Because I don’t think you could if you tried.”

Vanya sinks back.

“Luther,” Diego growls, “we can’t do this to him.” At that, Klaus nods jerkily from Luther’s grip.

Luther looks uncharacteristically withdrawn. “I don’t have any other options, Diego. We don’t have time for this—it’s the literal end of the world. We have to be heroes, and we can’t do that if we waste all our time babysitting. I’m not happy about this either, but the point of a leader is to make hard decisions when nobody else will.”

“You’re not the ‘leader’ of this family."

“I am since nobody else is taking that responsibility. What’s your plan, Diego? Are you ready to watch the world burn because Klaus couldn’t get sober?”

“I-I don’t…” Diego trails off.

Luther gives a grunt and carries Klaus into the windowless room. Klaus hisses curses the entire way, legs kicking for a ground they cannot reach.

Vanya watches in abject rage, knowing all too well she doesn’t have the familial authority to challenge Number One. Popping a pill, she scurries back upstairs, maybe to practice Stravinsky until the awful feelings subside. Her plan is interrupted when she turns the corner of the staircase and runs straight into Allison, juggling necessities for their brother.

“Oh—you startled me!” says Allison. But with her catlike reflexes, not even the tumbler of water spills. She clutches a pillow and blanket beneath one arm and balances a tray with sandwiches and water in the other. It’s a maternal image. (Vanya wonders how many times she did that for Claire.)

“Are those cucumber sandwiches?” asks Vanya.

“Yeah. Klaus used to eat _platters_ of these at press conferences and charity events,” Allison reminisces, “I cut the crusts off. He was always picky about that.”

“I remember. I wonder what he’s been eating on the streets. He...doesn’t look good.”

“Probably not those fancy hors d'oeuvres anymore.”

“Probably not.” Vanya gives a sad smile.

Allison returns it and heads down the stairs to drop off the items to Klaus. When she gets there, she notices that Luther’s waiting outside, and, by process of elimination, Diego and Klaus are in the room. She raises an eyebrow and opens the door. They seem to be in the midst of an argument, so she leaves the pillow, blanket, and tray under the light and departs without another word.

Diego is too busy with his brother to even notice her at all.

“Klaus. You need to get sober."

"You feds always _looove_ ordering us around, don't you?"

"I'm not a fed. I'm just worried, man. Y-you’re k-killing yourself.” And damn, his voice loves to give up just when it shouldn’t.

Klaus laughs joylessly. “Boo-fucking-hoo.”

“You don’t care about anyone but yourself then, is that it? You’re just okay with ending your life because you’re a selfish asshole that won’t listen to anyone?”

“If you hate me so much, just give my shit back and I’ll _leave_! I won’t say anything, swear.” His tone changes like a fuse was lit. “Please—just give it back. I’ll do anything. You want money? Drugs? Sex? I can—“

“You don’t even know who I am,” Diego says in disbelief.

He nods his head desperately. “Yeah—yeah I do!”

“Yeah?”

Klaus nods.

“Who am I, Klaus?” Diego’s voice cracks.

Klaus doesn’t answer, lips parting to form a name he cannot remember.

“That’s what I thought.”

Diego can’t listen to another word. He turns to leave.

“Wait. Wait! No! Don’t lock me in the mausoleum. You’ll regret it.” He clambers closer. “Ben said he’d tear you apart if you did it again, don’t—“

Diego’s heart clenches at the mention of Ben. That is just...low. Had Klaus been smearing his memory to threaten people? Their own dead brother? It’s like Klaus isn’t even someone he knows anymore. His gloved fingers lock the door behind him, pretending not to hear the muffled begs.

Diego just needs his brother back. “Sober up. Please, bro," he says behind the door.

Klaus has to stop before he poisons himself until there is nothing left. There are no other options; his memory is shot, his body is stretched thin and his spirit is gone. He can’t afford to lose anything else. 

Desperate times, desperate measures.

Diego double-checks the lock on the door. _It’s not hesitation,_ he tells himself, _I’m not leaving him like before. He needs this. Otherwise, he won’t help himself—no—he_ can’t _help himself._

_This is for his own good._

As he walks away, he thinks of Eudora, and what Five said about doomsday. The time traveler was certain that Klaus played a role in saving the world: a thought that strikes him as insane after his last conversation. But even if there was an ounce of truth to that, if forcing Klaus to get sober could save the world, save _Eudora_ …

He’d do anything to make it happen.

* * *

Five feels wary about leaving Klaus with his siblings, but if he didn’t get a caffeine fix right now he’d pass out. He’s the only Hargreeves with more than one functioning brain cell. They need those brain cells awake if they want him to avert the impending Armageddon.

He had left Luther, Diego, Allison, and Vanya with a litany of books on stimulant withdrawal, not leaving until he was satisfied that they were taking it seriously. Klaus had seemed—not great, but less manic and more docile than earlier. He seemed content enough scrawling nonsense on an old sketchpad. Allison suggested the notebook after it became clear that Klaus would either walk off or hurt himself without something to fixate on. 

The coffee excursion won’t take long, but something like guilt twitched in his gut at leaving his brother for even fifteen minutes.

As the Hargreeves luck would have it, his outing was _not_ fifteen minutes.

All Five wants is a cup of fucking coffee. The Commission shows up before he can even take a sip. Of course they had to attack Griddy’s. A _donut shop_ , of all places. It’s a good thing that he’s always prepared to fight, but that doesn’t mean he always _wants_ to.

“You think I want to shoot a kid? Go home with that on my conscience?”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about that. You won’t be going home.”

And just like that, his body count is higher and his coffee trip is ruined.

Even by his standards, it’s a fairly creative fight: butterknife to the carotid, mop to the ribs, tie to the throat, and a particularly satisfying pencil to the groin. The assassin attributes his artistic flair to his unbridled fury at the Commission for wasting his time. At least the adrenaline woke him up.

Wiping the blood from his skin and wrangling his tie back on, Five scolds himself for his carelessness. The stupid tracker in his arm gave away his location. He tears the beeping device from his flesh and plops it in the gutter outside. Maybe he should feel guilty for the merciless murders, but, alas. Five has a more important issue waiting at home.

Except said Important Issue isn’t anywhere to be found when he gets there.

“Where’s Klaus?” Five demands upon entering the dining room.

Vanya gasps. “Five—what happened? Is that blood?”

“Yes. Not mine. Where. Is. Klaus?”

“Um.” Luther clears his throat. “He’s fine, we just had to take some precautionary measures.”

Five bristles. “And what ‘precautionary measures’ might those be?”

“He tried to escape,” begins Diego.

“I swear if you make me ask one more time...”

Allison purses her lips. “We had to protect him from himself—he was going out to get high again. It wasn’t safe.”

Five’s eye twitches. “ _And?_ ”

“We had to lock him in the basement,” Luther relents.

“I tried to talk to him.” Diego doesn’t look up when he speaks.

“What the fuck,” states Five.

“The other rooms had windows! He wouldn’t stop trying to jump out of them!”

“Take me there. Now.”

The siblings head towards the stairs, Five following like a particularly aggressive herding dog. As they approach the basement, something like a wail echoes louder.

 _Klaus_ , Five realizes with a jolt. His most vulnerable brother is fucking alone and _begging_. The other siblings grimace at the sound.

Luther unlocks the basement door with a grunt. “If he runs, you’re chasing him down, not me.”

 _Creak!_ The door swings open. The room is dark save for one dim lightbulb dangling from the ceiling, and it takes Five a minute to realize that the blob crumpled on the floor is his brother.

“Jesus.”

“Dad, let me out!” begs Klaus. His voice is hoarse and frail, like he’s been yelling for an hour.

Diego frowns. “What did you just say?”

“Dad, please, I’ll be good, I’m not scared, I’m not!” he promises, scrambling to his knees.

“There’s no way he summoned Dad, right?” asks Luther, “he’s way too out of it.”

“It’s a flashback, you cretin." The assassin crouches down to join Klaus on the floor, eyeing the sweat rolling down his forehead. He reaches out with a tentative hand, carefully cupping his bony shoulder. “You’re not there anymore. I don’t know if you can hear me, but you’re okay.”

The time traveler turns to his siblings when Klaus doesn’t respond. “It could be caused by early withdrawal. Or lack of sleep. Hallucinations are a symptom of both.”

Five tries not to think about withdrawing from alcohol in the apocalypse. How his greedy tongue felt like sandpaper no matter how much drinking water he wasted. The shaking, the vomiting, the blinding headaches...it honestly made him wish for a merciful death. Anything to make it stop.

And The Handler said he lacks empathy. 

_Yeah, right._

Watching his brother suffer, Five wishes that were the case.

“Dad? Pogo? Please, I can’t do this anymore, I _can’t_ —they’ll _kill_ me—“ Klaus cuts off when he chokes on his wheezing sobs. Five clutches his hand in an awkward motion, the warmth feeling foreign and wrong to his touch-starved body. He hopes Klaus gets the message anyway.

Allison bites her nails, a nervous tic she hadn’t done in years. “What’s he talking about?”

“I think...I think his personal training must’ve been worse than he let on.”

“Holy shit,” breathes Diego, “Klaus said something about a mausoleum earlier. I thought he was just high. Do you think…”

“Reginald. That rat bastard. Probably locked him up, just like you imbeciles did tonight.” Five pauses to rub his temple. “Someone help me get him out of here.”

Luther interjects in disbelief. “You’re joking, right? He’ll just run off again.”

“Luther, get it through your thick skull—“

“Maybe the apocalypse messed up your—“

“Guys, maybe we should—“

“Stay out of this, Vanya!”

Down in the secluded basement, the Hargreeves bicker without an end in sight.

This is unfortunate for many reasons. But most importantly, because it means that they don’t hear the:

Hiss of gas.

Pop of a lock.

OR

Two new sets of footsteps.

Up above, two masked figures in blue suits enter the Academy. The Hargreeves didn’t know it yet, but their no-good night was about to get a whole lot worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...oops.
> 
> and the plot is back! also, in this timeline, klaus arrives too late to ravage reggie’s office, so the diary never ends up in the dumpster. as a result, harold doesn’t have any interest in vanya.
> 
> the hargreeves will get a hug eventually. but it’ll get worse, first.


End file.
